Thoughts and commentary about the janitorial and office cleaning business.

June 2012

06/29/2012

Driving north on 7th Avenue in Phoenix (we do commercial janitorial service around here), I glanced left after crossing Camelback Avenue and noticed that the abandoned Target store had finally been demolished. Brought back memories.

Years back (and I do mean years), the building housed a Fedmart. On the afternoon of Fedmart's grand opening, I took a call from their purchasing agent (fully trained as such - she had a diploma on her wall). She needed - fast - a quote on seven night per week floor cleaning and burnishing. Her previous service had walked off the job the night before, saying they were not getting paid enough. The grand opening crowd was walking over partially stripped, and mostly not refinished, and quite tacky tile - dribbling the grand opening free soda and free ice cream cones.

She (the purchasing agent) needed a quote for a minimum of 20 man hours per night, pretty much 365 nights per year. She could monitor the 20 hours because she'd be locking the crew in. She needed full access to our books, to insure that we'd be paying at least the legal minimum, and covering the required taxes and workers comp. And the most she'd be able to pay was what she'd contracted the previous service for.

I patiently (sort of) penciled out for her minimum wage, taxes, workers comp; multiplied by 20 hours per night; multiplied by 30 plus nights per month. Labor expense would be almost $1000.00 per month more than she was willing to pay. Not counting chemicals, equipment, supervision, uniforms, and so on. I asked her why I might want such a job.

She looked me square in the eye and explained that, though I'd loose money on that job, she had eight other stores in the Valley; if we gave her quality work, she could get me the other stores - same hours, same open books, same price. I could "make it up in volume".

We've offered janitorial services in Phoenix since 1974; hold the BBB's A-plus rating; and have long been in the forefront of the industry in environmentally sensitive cleaning for health, safety and security. Our office cleaning program can generally improve Indoor Air Quality, in the size range of most allergens, by a factor of 50%, as reflected in our ongoing IAQ sampling. We also furnish Green Seal certified recycled restroom paper products and janitorial supplies.